Asphalt
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: Paul once mentioned that things had been bad at his old school, that he'd never fit in, despite his good looks and charm. How bad? What if Suze and Paul met in New York, in ninth grade at a 'special school' for juvenile delinquents?
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: Paul once mentioned that things had been bad at his old school, that he'd never fit in, despite his good looks and charm. How bad? What if Suze and Paul met in New York, in ninth grade at a 'special school' for juvenile delinquents?  
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It had uniforms.

No seriously.

_Uniforms. _

And not the sexy Catholic schoolgirl type either. Nuh-uh. Ash-grey blouse, pearl-grey skirt, knee-high charcoal blazer and knee-high socks, silver badge.

Now don't get me wrong - I have nothing against the color grey. As a matter of fact, Pantone even named Isabelline the Color of the Year a few years back. It's a cute color, it is and yes, it _is _grey - check wikipedia if you don't believe me!

But grey on grey on grey on even _more _grey? Yeah, I felt just about as perky as um, asphalt. Or armpit sweat. You take your pick. They're both grey.

Seriously, the uniform was enough to make me regret ever setting foot on the primrose path that leads to juvenile delinquency. Which was what the authorities called it. _I _prefer to call it my samaritan duty towards the most pitifully neglected section of society - the dead. I just wish the battery of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, behavioral analysts, counselors and clinical social workers that I have been exposed to (with alarming frequency) over the past four years could see it that way.

Turns it, they hadn't. Which was why I was facing the brick walls of St. Edward's Institute for Children with Special Needs _aka _Dealer of Unusually Ugly Uniforms on my first day of highschool.

My mom seemed to gotten the impression that it was my first day of _kindergarten _though. Which was why she was still hanging onto my quilted Stella McCartney bag (I'd finally managed to detach her from my arm) and mouthing, "Be good"s to me.

I'd lost the heart to deliver the classic, "Am I ever anything, but?" a while back. Instead I went, "Uh huh, Mom, yes, Mom, I understand, I'll be a good girl, of course, Mom, no, no, I won't do anything stupid, or bad or dangerous or..."

Well. You get the picture.

I guess I couldn't really blame her. With a track record as bad as mine - charges of felony, trespassing on private property, underage driving, breaking and entering and a talent for making everyone's life a little more surreal - any mom in her right mind would be concerned. OK, cross out concerned. Replace it with scared shitless. Girls like my mom (who is really too hot to be a mom at all) made boys' hearts beat a little faster. Girls like me? Well, they make boys' hearts beat a _lot _faster. And not because of my awesomecool superpower of seduction either. It's just that things have a way of exploding when I'm around.

Oh I know what you're thinking - fun. Well, you're not stuck with the label of 'juvenile delinquent' or a grey-on-grey uniform, honey.

"So, I'll pick you up at four then," my mom said finally, giving my bag a last squeeze. "And you'll-?"

"Try to stay in one piece and make sure that the school doesn't blow up," I said, with a bright smile.

My mom nodded, satisfied. What more could you want from your daughter? "I love you, sweetie," she said, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears. Cue cheesy music - this was our Hollywood moment of touching mother-daughter affection.

"Love you too, mom," I replied automatically. Then, before she could seize the moment and wrap me in a warm embrace or kiss me or otherwise embarass me in front of my fellow classmates, I detached myself (and my bag) from her clutches and made a beeline for the steps. When I'd reached the top and made sure that she wouldn't make a move to follow me up, I waved back to her.

There was something almost forlorn about her, standing all alone, the wind tugging at the long auburn hair, that peekd out from her emerald-green beret. Color-coded, she was. Hot, she was. Happy, she was not.

And it was my fault. All my fault.

* * *

St. E's was (ostentatiously) for children with special needs but it was also kind of like a rehab centre for super-rich kids. You had the gay sons of Saudi sheiks who could indulge themselves away from a country where homosexuality meant execution. You had the daughters of druglords who needed a special type of security - which St. E was happy to provide. At a nominal fee of course. You had child actors who couldn't handle the pressure and had some very nasty things on _their _track records. You had picture-perfect debutantes who'd finally snapped and starred in a series of pornos - much to the chagrin of their senator-dads. They needed peace and privacy - which St. E was again happy to provide. You had people like me.

Well, St. E existed because of us. It was happy to provide a stable learning environment for unstable personalities who had nothing left to learn on ahem, questionable, topics.

Glossy brochure in hand, I navigated the swanky, shiny corridors searching for Auditorium B where the freshman class would be treated to a rousing welcome by the principal, the staff and the student council. I passed wildebeest-like herds bathed in luscious Dior scents, toting limited edition Balenciaga handbags, chattering about rad parties in the Bahamas. I passed a burqa-person trailed by a pair of bodyguards - too rich for just one bodyguard apparently. Why _didn't _Princess Mia of Genovia attend St. E instead of Albert Einstein's? She'd be more at home here - she met the bodyguard requirement and the special needs requirement (she seemed semi-retarded to me...) perfectly.

And I bumped into a hot guy.

Scratch out hot. Replace it with mindblowingly, heartstoppingly, gutwrenchingly sexy.

Let me explain myself more clearly. Everyone I'd passed looked like asphalt. He, well he looked like asphalt too, sure - molten-hot, lava-hot streets-of-NY-in-July asphalt. Yeah, that's how sexy he was. Silky black curls, velvety blue eyes, a tennis tan, broad shoulders, long legs, smirk-in-place-of-smile - oh baby, he had the works.

It just goes to show how crazy the student population at St. E's was, that nobody seemed to have noticed that there was a Greek God in their midst.

(Or maybe, as I've always suspected, they send the dyslexic demigod kids of Ancient Greek Gods to St. E's _a la _Percy Jackson).

Sure, gangs of girls burst into throaty giggles as they passed him and totally scoped him out... but he wasn't targeted and molested as he would have been at any other place. Lucky for me, I guess. Because when he saw a single female, unattached to a gang, a lone wolf like him, he hailed me with relief.

"Oi," he said.

"Yes?" I said, flying to his side as the bee flies to the honeysuckle. You might be interested to know that Pantone has declared honeysuckle as the Color of the Year for 2011. Not wanting to frighten him off, I only gave him my cutest Salesgirl Smile without launching into a I-am-your-Sex-Slave smirk of unutterable and unedurable sexiness. When applied by trained professionals like geisha and my mom, it has been known to have nigh-lethal effects.

"You don't happen to know the way to Auditorium B, do you?"

So he was a freshman too! Wow! Maybe we'd share a class! Maybe we'd share more than a class! Maybe we'd share all our classes and he would look deep into my eyes and my heart and we would get married in a honeysuckle arbor and have beautiful Brangelinaesque babies and...

"No," I said, smiling.

"I thought not," he said.

_Eh_? "Then why'd you ask?" I asked coyly, batting my eyelashes. My eyes are green - well, green in some lights - so I can totally work the eyelash-batting trick and make it look Scarlett O'Haraesque.

"Because you looked just about as stupid as I feel."

"Excuse me?" I said frostily.

"But then I figured, hey, maybe two stupids is better than one." He stuck his hand out. "Paul Slater at your service, Susannah Simon."

I didn't bother to ask him how he knew my name. It was obvious. Since I'd 'supposedly' blown up my old school last June, probably half of the USA was acquainted with my name. And no, it wasn't my fault. It was the work of a vengeful demon whom I'd managed to exorcise.

At the measly cost of one seriously ugly building.

If only people could see my side of the story! I deserved a medal for heroism instead of a personalized court order directing me to seek intensive counseling and to attend one of the best remedial schools for juvenile delinquents in the country.

"Suze," I said. "So what brings you to this fine institution, Paul? Is your story as sensational as mine?"

His grin broadened. "Almost," he said. "Though it certainly doesn't have the celebrity status your story has managed to achieve."

"So what'd you do?" I asked companionably, as one war veteran might ask another where he'd been posted. I matched my stride to his as we navigated the glittering steel-and-marble halls of St. Edward's.

"Fed my cousin to my pet piranhas."

"You have pet piranhas?"

"You want some?"

"I don't do so well with pets."

"That's a shame. I love animals."


	2. Chapter 2

Headphones jammed in my ears, _Macarena _blasting - yeah I have a soft spot for corny wedding music, sue me - I was jiving my hips as I sorted through my thrifted loot. With my Pucci boots and Balenciaga totes I might look like a trust-fund Upper Eastsider to you but I'm Brooklyn to my bones, baby. The secret? Thrift shopping.

Yeah, I know, I know, but its really not that bad. Seriously. Diamonds in the rough, yo, you dive into the sea of vomit-splashed, compost-scented fabric and sometimes you come out with something really, really good (which admittedly needs to be washed about seven times but I digress). Like the Maserati minidress - fuchsia with the cutest print of hipster-glass-wearing cats in white - and the skintight Marc Jacobs waxed jeans in oxblood - this fall's _it _color - which I'd picked up today. Seriously I tell you, thrift shops are just like Barneys for the underprivileged.

Too bad I'd blown up my old school. It didn't have uniforms so I could have actually worn this stuff instead of waiting for a date (so lolz, like _that's _ever going to happen).

Anyway, I was too busy jiving and sorting to hear when my door was 'thunderously pounded upon' - Gina's words not mine, she was in her medieval romances stage. But I _did_ feel it when the door was thrown open (flung would be a better word actually). I think our whole apartment felt it, I think our whole _building_ felt it, hell even the spirits in the patch of the afterworld just above us probably felt it. For a moment I thought it was a seriously pissed-off spirit but then Gina pounced, pinning me to the bed.

She popped out my earphones, scratched my cheek and screamed, "Rawr!" in my face. All very cougar-ish. If I was a guy I would have died and gone to orgasmic heaven in that moment, Gina being Gina after all. Auto arousal asphyxiation, much? But I only rolled over and shoved her off. She's about half a foot taller than me and not exactly Size Zero - she's more on the busty side and guys adore her for it - but I've been kickboxing since I was nine years old and had begun to understand the necessity of mixed martial arts in my line of work.

"I missed you," she wailed, rolling over onto her stomach and drumming her legs on the bed. I sighed and began to fold up my new acquisitions. "You saw me yesterday night," I pointed out.

She poked her tongue out. "But its not the same as seeing you in school everyday." She was wearing a slinky black tank-top and low-waist dust-green cargoes that exposed her silver navel-ring. On her feet were leopard-print cat-eared ballet flats that I'd gotten for her and she had about a dozen silver and copper bangles stacked on her left arm. She also had on a spiked black earring cuff that made my mom queasy and a silver fertility symbol on a black cord at her neck. Her frizzy copper hair was frothing down her tanned shoulders. She looked hot in a ghetto way. Gina's style wasn't mine and sometimes the combinations she hit upon made me downright ill but she managed to pull it off.

"And you had to go to your lameass shrink afterwards anyway." She pouted. "I wanted to talk!"

I shrugged. "C'est la vie." After therapy I'd headed into the nearest thrift shop I could find, determined to scourge the memory with a generous dose of retail therapy. Hey, I deserved it. You don't see Batman scrimping on his material comforts, do you? And I'm _totally_ like New York City's Batman.

Well, sort of.

After getting back home I'd wriggled straight out of my disgusting asphalt-themed uniform and into my comfiest pajamas - the ones with the little yellow ducks - and my furry bear slippers. They were actually my _dad's _slippers and too big for me but they were like uber-soft and I liked to put them on when I was feeling down. I'd tied my hair back with an elastic - yes, I know, _elastic_ - and I was all busy trying to find my Zen and whatever when Gina interrupted. Normally I love Gina to pieces but she's sort of like a tornado... and tornado was not the theme I was looking for today. Duckies and hot chocolate would have been a better theme.

"So how was it?" she demanded, oblivious to my irritation.

"Same old," I sighed. "I've been going to intensive therapy for three weeks now, you know the routine. He asked me some bullshit, I made up some bullshit, we looked at each other for an hour sans sparks and kept meeting eachother's eyes when we were checking the clock. And no I wasn't on the couch, I was on a bloody chair."

She swatted me. "Not therapy, dumbass!" She rolled her eyes. She'd been super psyched when I had to go to 'a real shrink' - evidently the countless hours I'd spent with innumerable school counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists even before I'd blown up our old school did not count (yeah I was a right little vandal since my midget days). Since I was now seeing a certified APA psychologist who could like, prescribe me hallucinogenic drugs and send me straitjacked to an asylum, I was 'in this shit for real, yo'.

"You know I meant how did you like your first day at school, Suze."

"God Gina, you sound like my mom."

She threw a pillow at me. Not in the cutesy way girls are always throwing pillows at eachother in movie slumber parties - or in guys' imaginations -, just before they 'playfully' strip down. She threw it at me like a line-breaker. Hard. "Any hot guys? Or chicks since that's your deal?"

Ever since seventh grade Gina has been convinced that 'chicks' are 'my deal'. That might have something to do with the fact that I've never dated a guy while she's gone through about... what a hundred? I don't even bother pointing out that I am more than willing to go out with a guy (provided that he fulfills a few basic criteria such as oh, acceptable dental hygiene, a lack of BO and the ability to talk about something other than sports) - its just the guys who seem to freak out when confronted by yours truly.

"Sort of," I said. "I did see this guy, Paul, at the school assembly. Paul Slater."

Gina's warm golden-hazel eyes widened. "Spill!" she squealed, bouncing up and down on my mattress. "Is he hot? Is he cute? But he does sound like a gay stylist, are you sure he's not gay? Is he hot-geek-cute or cute-jock-hot cause geeks are like totally in right now but you can never go wrong with a nice big jock-"

"Jesus why don't you just Facebook him up like everyone else does?"

She pounced on my green Vaio before I could even finish the sentence. While I was brushing my hair she logged onto my account - she's had my password since the day I activated it and I've had hers. "He's sent you a friend request!" she shrieked, as though he'd just asked me to marry him.

"Whataloser," I sighed though I did drift over to check his profile. His profile picture was pretty generic - him hiking - but it was enough for Gina to squeal again.

"He looks hot!" she announced. "Really nice body, Suze."

"He is hot," I had to admit. Before she could scream in my ear again, I held up my hand and said, "But he's not my type."

"Since when do you have a type?!"

"Oh come _on_, Augustin," I sighed, slapping the laptop's lid down. "He goes to a psycho school. Obviously he's there for a reason."

"Um, I hate to break it to you but _you're_ there for-"

"That's different," I muttered, putting the laptop away. I refused to look at her. "You know it is."

Gina pursed up her face mutinously. Usually she skittered around this topic - she knew it was sensitive but she didn't know why since I'd never explained it to her, all she had to go by were some heavy hints - but today she just didn't seem to be in the mood. "No I don't think I know," she snapped. "You're always saying its complicated, that you'll tell me but you never do!" She blew her breath dramatically in frustration.

"Well today's not the day," I snapped, my voice coming out harsher than I'd meant it to. "Really Gina, I've had a long day. All I want to do is just go to sleep now."

"At nine o'clock?" she asked incredulously.

I shrugged. She scowled at me. "Fine," she snapped, "Fine, I'll just go since you obviously don't want me here." Gina and I were always getting into tiffs like this - usually over nothing. It was a best friends' thing. So I didn't feel too bad when I waved her off though I did feel a little bad when my mom slipped out of her room a moment later.

"Was that Gina stomping out?" she asked me. Like me she was dressed for a lazy night kicking in - a white cotton nightie with kittens on it and her hair loosely braided. "What did you say to her!"

I threw up my hands in frustration. "Nothing!" I lied. "Why does everyone think its my fault?"

My voice must have been louder than I'd thought because the old lines of worry settled on her face. "I'm sorry, mom," I said softly, lowering my voice. "I didn't say anything. Gina was just grouchy and... well, yeah."

She nodded. I shuffled after her into the bedroom, wanting to make things better between us. Everything had ugh, just gotten so messed up after the debacle with the school. Small wonder too - she really was a saint for putting up with me for so long. If I had a kid like me I'd probably either ship it off to boarding school or abandon it during a vacation. That or drown it like they do unwanted kittens in farms.

"What'cha doin'?" I asked, dropping onto her bed. My mom's taste runs to... girly. She lives in a fantasy paradiseland of a bedroom, perfect for a five-year-old. Think frou frou and pink lace. And mirrors and fluffiness. Cringe. Cringe some more when you notice the pink-cheeked shepherdesses in china plates mounted on the bedroom walls. No wonder she can't keep a boyfriend for more than a few months - between maniacal me and her taste in decorating bedrooms we've probably sabotaged her love life forever. The longest one she held onto was Christian when I was twelve - they went out for almost nine months.

Then he told her he was gay.

Well... the way he gushed over her bedroom should have been _some _indication.

"Watching Gone With the Wind," she told me brightly. "Do you want to stay and watch it with me?"

I wanted to do nothing of the sort but obligingly, I curled up under her rose-spattered bedspread. She had dad's old teddy - the battered one with only one ear - in bed with her too. We sat together, sort of hugging it at the same time, rubbing our cold toes together.

"I love this movie," she sighed. "Sometimes Scarlett reminds me so much of you, Suze."

"Huh?" I stared at her. She was sentimental as hell, sprouting out the purest crap but I decided to humor her. I felt like I owed it.

"Yes," she said. "You do your own thing, sometimes I don't understand it, but you're very much your own person, just like her. And someday, you'll be just as strong and beautiful as her."

It didn't make a lot of sense - didn't Scarlett indulge in all sorts of shady practices so that her lumber business ran better and didn't she marry two men for their money and try to seduce her friend's husband for twelve years? - but I nodded sagely. "Sure Mom, sure."

* * *

I shared a couple classes with Slater - Math being one of them.

I suck big hairy shriveled balls at Math. Back in my old school, I used to just copy Gina's sums - and she used to copy them from Kevin Lee, the resident Asian whiz kid, who's had a crush on her since like, kindergarten. Now I needed a new sucker to help me out. I cast furtive looks through the classroom, checking for someone appropriately desperate-for-feminine-companionship and Asian - any other ethnicity was acceptable only under stringent consideration and thorough background checks.

I hadn't even considered Paul Slater. The guy was clearly too hot to be good at something as mundane yet depressing as _Math_.

We were supposed to be working through a Math assignment during homeroom and I still hadn't found my stooge yet. Paul was sitting in front of me and it was only after a few minutes of scanning futilely through the classroom and then looking down desperately at my own spotless practice sheet that I realized that Paul wasn't doing anything. Everyone else was working through their sums earnestly but Paul's page was already full.

I stared at him so hard that I think I managed to burn a hole through his subconscious with my inner eye. He did turn around after a moment and offered me a dazzling smile - and what's more, his assignment.

"How'd you finish them so fast?" I demanded, grasping the paper for dear life.

"I was working through them in class when they were handed out. I knew all that bullshit Raynell was screeching about anyway."

"Are you sure they're alright?" I asked dubiously. I had no clue whether they were right or wrong, I knew they were all numbers and I knew the answers were supposed to be in numbers. Beyond that - nada. Mea culpa. I was such a douche with numbers.

He rolled his eyes. "Sweetheart," he said, "I'm a fucking genius." He didn't say it arrogantly or anything, he just said it like I was a retard and he was Tom Cruise and I hadn't recognized him on the street.

"Fucking genius, eh?" I said lightly, deciding to take his word for it. I started to copy down his answers blindly, wondering whether I should verify them and if so, with who. None of my friends - and I had really few friends, believe me - were any good at Math. "Are you like a sexaholic or something? Is that why you're here?"

"No."

"So what's your deal?"

"I'm bipolar." I dropped my pen. He rolled his eyes. "You're a psychopath, right? Or sociopath, is it? What's the official diagnosis?"

"I'm not," I muttered.

"So then why'd you blow up your old school?" He straddled his chair, eying me keenly.

"Kind of a long story." I bent over my paper, letting the curtain of my hair shield my face.

"Was it a mafia thing?"

"Erm... it was kind of cartel-ish, yeah," I said. I felt really awkward and just sort of weirded out, you know? Like when you'd had too much Thai takeout and your stomach bloats out and you feel peakish - well Slater had that effect on me. He made me feel like I was wading through honey, like I was slow and bloated. I scribbled away faster, just desperate to finish copying his paper so I could hand it over to him and pretend I needed to go to the washroom - and just stay there till the period was over. "Look can we not talk about this?"

"You just had to ask," he said breezily. Then, abruptly, "Your Algebra is really screwed, isn't it?"

I nodded meekly.

"Want me to help you with it?" he offered. "I can tutor you if you want, I'm pretty great at this sort of stuff."

"Uh, no thanks," I said. "But it'd be really great if you'd let me copy off you for the rest of the term." _Or just till I find another stooge. _The idea of using Paul as my stooge made me... uncomfortable. To put it mildly.

He tsked. "That's no way to learn, Miss Simon."

"I don't want to. I won't even need Math later."

"What do you plan to do?"

I shrugged. "I don't know," I said, though I knew perfectly well. "Fashion designing, maybe?" I said it lightly but it was anything but.

He pursed his lips. "You'll need Math for that."

"Huh?"

"Well think about it," he said reasonably. "You need to cut up fabric and measure it, won't you need Geometry for it? What about for the accounting? And about supplying and-"

"Ok, ok," I said, flapping my hands. "I get your point." I tossed his sheet back to him. "Thanks by the way. I just suck at Math, always have, always will. I don't really need your help, its just hopeless..."

"My mom's in fashion," he told me. "She's an editor at Runway."

"Oh. Cool." I was going for sanguine but my eyes must have widened or my voice must have gone squeaky or _something_ must have given me away because he started to grin.

"You'd be interested in meeting her, I think."

Would I ever? Fuck yeah! Runway! His mom was an editor at Runway! Cue squeals and sparkly rainbows and hitting !111111 on the keyboard a bazillion times.

He put his hand lightly on my desk. "What about at a party?" he offered. "My mom throws soirees sometime. She wouldn't mind if I showed up with a friend..." His voice trailed off suggestively.

I nodded faintly. He had predatory eyes, electric blue and almost laser-like in the way they pinned me down. "That'd be great," I said.

He smirked. "I think so, Suze. I think you'd really enjoy yourself."

Fortunately for me, the bell rang at that moment. "Uh great," I said and grabbing my things practically fled from the classroom.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I know - two year long hiatus. Crazy much?**


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